Jonathan Santlofer - L.A. Noire - The Collected Stories

Out on the street I’m thinking Mickey was just testing me, seeing if I could take it, that he’s going to be getting back to me soon, and I picture myself behind a mahogany reception desk at the Flamingo, chatting up movie stars and gangsters, everyone laughing and saying what a swell guy I am, and I start feeling good again. Before long, I’m behind the reception desk at the hotel, moving dust around with a dirty rag, when these two cops come in and start asking me about the dame who worked at the May Company department store and I give them an innocent look and keep mopping the counter, real casual, and they say something about finding a matchbook with the hotel’s name at the scene of the crime, but I don’t flinch, I just tell them how she checked in and got drunk and left with some sailor, keeping my voice real quiet and they seem to buy it and I think for a minute that I’m telling the truth, that maybe I didn’t kill her after all, that it was the sailor or another guy or maybe even her husband, that it was just a bad dream I had about strangling her till I heard a bone crack deep inside her throat, and I lead the two cops up to her room on the third floor and tell them I’ll be downstairs if they need me and ten minutes later they’re back, and the young cop, a hotshot all-American type, asks me what time the dame checked in and I turn the register book around for him and point out her signature and he asks if she said anything important and I say, “Like what?” and he gives me a long hard stare and for a minute I think the words are going to fall out of my mouth— It was me! I did it! I’m your man! I want to say it so bad because it’s time that I was famous, but I keep my yap shut and wipe the counter over and over till it’s so shiny I can see my regular-Joe face staring back at me, but it doesn’t look familiar.

The cops walk around the hotel lobby whispering the whole time I’m busy rearranging keys on hooks that don’t need no rearranging, and then the young one, Mr. All-American, looks at me again and this time I offer him a smile, nothing special, though I freeze it on my face and Carole’s last smile comes into my mind like I just opened a bottle and a goddamn genie popped out.

Carole, I say, my hands on her throat, gimme a smile, but she just looks at me like she always does, like I was nothing, and I ask, Where was I born? Who am I? What’s my name? and she sneers and says, Who cares? and I say, I’m John, right? and she says in a singsong voice, Or Jack or James or Jake or —and then I’m pleading, Carole—Mom—please— and she says, You can’t prove that I’m your fucking mother—maybe I just took you in ‘cause I pitied you— and I tighten my grip on her neck just like I will with all the other girls and I can’t stop squeezing. Afterward I cut her up, body in half, then in pieces, arms, legs, torso, then wrap all of it up in a sack like it was a filleted animal and dump it into one of the trash bins outside the Cudahy meatpacking plant, already half filled with bones and guts, and I never heard another word about it, no news story, no nothing, no one missing Carole.

I’m still looking at the young cop and thinking maybe I’ll make him famous, give him a lead, a tip, that there’s this guy, John or Jon without an h or James, who’s connected to this murder and a whole lot more, but I don’t say anything and who knows, maybe I’m lying, maybe there is no John or Jon or James, no tortured boy for you to feel sorry for, no mother named for the actress Carole Lombard, only some guy, some regular Joe without a name, just a monster.

I am the master of all I survey.

Well, not really.

This is Los Angeles, after all.

Still, I like to crack that joke with people. Makes my job sound almost… important. My business card reads: WILLIAM SHELTON, P.L.S. (professional land surveyor), GREATER LOS ANGELES TITLE CO., DOWNTOWN DIVISION. But what I really do is drive my Lincoln around in the dry heat and set up my theodolite on its tripod and make little measurements and write them down in my notebook. Then I go home to my empty apartment on West Temple Street, where I stare at the walls and try not to climb them. Just me and my tripod, propped up in the corner, waiting for me to pick it up and report to work the next day.

I don’t even know what made me notice that bar on Los Angeles Street—Ray’s Café, 77.5 by 47.5 feet in a commercial zone.

But the Santa Ana winds were blowing and I was thirsty and I decided to go in.

It was noon. I stepped inside and sat at a wooden table for four, as if I were expecting three friends to join me. Which seemed slightly less desperate than sitting alone at the bar. I leaned the tripod against the opposite end of the table and waited for someone to notice me.

And after a few minutes, she did.

A shot and a cold glass of beer were placed down on the table in front of me and a beautiful woman took the seat next to me. Her scent reached me first—the aroma of jacaranda trees. Her dark hair and smooth white skin were just as intoxicating.

“I know you didn’t order this,” she said softly.

All at once it felt like the collar on my Bullock’s shirt had shrunk a few sizes.

“What is it?” I asked, stupidly.

She smiled. “A shot and a cold glass of beer.”

Only then did I realize that the beautiful woman sitting next to me was the waitress.

“Is there a menu?”

“You can have anything you want.”

“What’s your name?”

She smirked and tapped her right breast.

BONNIE.

“Good to meet you,” I said. “My name’s”

“Let’s go out tonight,” she said.

A statement; not a question. As if going out were a foregone conclusion.

“I’m sorry?”

“We close at two. Come in for a nightcap just before, and we’ll hit the town. What do you say?”

Now, I should have said:

No, that’s ridiculous. I report for work at the Greater Los Angeles Title Company, Downtown Division, at 8:00 a.m. sharp, and if we go out at 2:00 a.m. I won’t be able to get any sleep, and there’s a good chance I’ll record a wrong measurement in my notebook, which could be the start of endless legal and business trouble. Surveyors have been to clean, sober, and deadly accurate.

But of course I said:

“Okay.”

Back at the office Shep was reclining in his chair, sweating out a hangover, eyes barely open. Mallahan was at the accounting desk in the back. I dug my per diem out of my pocket, put it down on the blotter in front of Mallahan.

“What’s this?” Mallahan asked. “You skip lunch?”

“A friend treated me.”

Mallahan rolled his eyes. “And you’re giving this back? Billy, my friend, you’re about as black-and-white as a nun. You don’t have to give this back. We consider it part of your salary.”

The company gave its surveyors cash for lunch, parking, incidentals. Mallahan was the partner who doled it out every morning. But I could still feel the shot and beer rolling around in my guts. I hoped Mallahan couldn’t smell it on my breath. I would have felt like a heel keeping the dough on top of everything else. I let the money sit on the blotter.

“Okay, then,” he said after a few moments, scooping up the bills and depositing them into a metal box he kept in his lower-left-hand drawer. Shep and Mallahan liked to keep their cash in one place. The company had done work for various banks, but they didn’t trust banks. The Depression had wiped them out once before; Shep and Mallahan swore up and down that it would never happen again.